The Kremlin is preparing to launch a “political education school” for young people, directly inspired by the Soviet model of the famous Komsomol higher school, according to a disclosure made by the RBK news agency, close to the Russian authorities.
Putin indoctrinates their youngs/photo: x
The new project-called the Dygoria Political Education Workshop-will aim to form a new generation of young personnel involved in the social-political administration and in working with youth organizations. Sources within the Presidential Administration say that the program will function as a “modern analogue” of the Soviet institution, which, until the 1990s, the form of tomorrow's communist party.
Return to the landmarks of ideological education
During the USSR period, Komsomol was the main organization of young people between 14 and 28 years old, a variety of an anti -members of the party, with a militarized and deeply ideological structure. The Komsomol Higher School offered intensive “communist education” courses and prepared future management cadres.
Now, under a new name and in another geopolitical context, Russia seems determined to reactivate an updated form of the same type of training. The selected young people will receive, according to the quoted source, “both ideological training and specific skills of organization and management within youth policies”.
The coordination of the project will return to the Federal Youth – Rosmolodej, the institution responsible for the implementation of state policies among the young generation. The plan is that by the end of the year, 12–13 educational programs will be organized, each with about 100 participants.
Indoctrination by education: a constant direction
The initiative is not unique in the recent Russian political landscape. In recent years, President Vladimir Putin has resumed and strengthened practices inspired by the Soviet era. In 2023, its administration launched the movement of the first – a youth organization with a clear reference to the pioneers, the mass structure that regiment the children during the communist period.
In parallel, the strategy of “military-patriotic education” has become an official line of internal policy. Schools, camps and youth organizations are actively involved in promoting a discourse on devotion, loyalty and militarism. Young people are formed by small in the spirit of “homeland defense” – a formula often used to justify the expansionist ambitions of the Putin regime.
An old model for a tense present
In the context of the conflict in Ukraine and an increasingly isolated rhetoric, the return to methods of ideological training of young people is not accidental. The Kremlin seems to strengthen its social and symbolic bases by appealing to Soviet memory – an idealized past in the official discourse, presented as a model of national cohesion and discipline.
What impact will this new “cadres school” have on the Russian youth remains to be seen. But the direction is clear: in Putin's Russia, education becomes more and more a political tool, and youth, a strategic stake.
